Voice of Determination
by MK15
Summary: The old Beth Greene died at Grady Memorial. The new Beth Greene is a survivor that is trying to find the mysterious voice that keeps motivating her to not give up. She is also trying to rediscover herself after forgetting almost everything.
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone! This is my very first fanfic. Please review and let me know how I'm doing!**

Beth awoke from a stone cold sleep only to find that she is laying on a church pew. Her head hurts like hell and she is struggling to remember anything. She touches her scalp and feels dried blood. She looks down and sees that she has a small bag of items next to her. The bag contains a diary, a pen, and a knife.

The pew she was laying on had a message carved on it that read:

 _Here lies Beth Greene, a gentle spirit that was loved by many._

She pulls out the diary and begins studying it like a textbook. She did all she could to remember who she was, and who she was reading about. Yet, she still felt lost. Eventually she was angrily flipping through the pages, trying to find any name she truly recognized.

 _Daryl._ For whatever reason, that name stuck out to her. She couldn't match a face to the name, but she did feel something at the very least. What she did learn about him based off of the diary was that he had a crossbow, a motorcycle, and a bad temper. Of all people to remember, she didn't understand why it would be him.

She tries to analyze her physical condition, and is not very pleased with the conclusion she comes to. Beth has a giant headache, memory loss, and her mouth feels like sandpaper. "I need a drink," she thinks to herself. She opens the door to the church and stumbles outside. Immediately, she spots something that catches her eye. There is a dead walker that is pinned to the side of the church with an arrow. She pulls the arrow out of the wall and feels a warm, yet dangerous feeling in her chest.

She feels hope.

Beth has no idea why, but she just knows that the arrow had to have been Daryl's. The arrow gives her a sense of comfort, and she can't help but smile.

It was obvious a rainstorm had just blown through, because there were puddles everywhere. There was one big one on the back door of the church, and she was so desperate that she drank the puddle water like it was the best water she had ever tasted. Beth went back to the church to grab her knife, and she went out to the forest in hopes of finding any food.

It was getting close to dark, and all she had found was a bush of wild berries. As she continued to walk back to the church, she became extremely light headed. She could hear voices saying her name and taunting her. The voices were all unrecognizable to her.

"You should've just died."

"We are better off without you."

"No one misses you."

She stumbled on a thick log and hit the ground hard. She was about to succumb to the darkness when she heard a gruff, familiar voice.

"You gonna give up that easily, Greene?"

"No. I will survive." Beth says with a newfound determination.

She tries to stand, but it so dizzy that she collapses once again. She can see the church in the setting sun. She's so close.

"You look like a fuckin' baby deer on ice. Get your ass up and walk, Greene."

"Shutup!" she barely gets out.

She attempts standing again, and this time with much greater success. She is still wobbly, but she manages to slowly walk to the church. She barely gets the door shut and locked when she collapses on the floor. As she starts slipping into a deep sleep, she hears: "I knew you were a survivor, Beth."

When she wakes up again, she feels remarkably better. The headache is gone, and she no longer feels dizzy. Although, she is still extremely hungry and dehydrated. She exits the church once again to go to the drinking puddle, but finds that it is now as dry as a bone.

 _How long was I out?_

She sees a walker stumbling towards her in the distance, and draws her knife to execute it. She was comfortable taking down one walker, but then another came behind it. One after another, the walkers began trickling out of the woods. She knew she couldn't take down at group of walkers with a knife alone. Beth ran back into the church and shut the door, peeking out of the boarding up windows, she watched two men gun down all 15 walkers. The two men started walking to the church door with mischievous looks in their eyes.

"Did you see that blonde bitch run in the church?"

"Yeah, she had a real nice ass."

Beth panicked when she heard that. She could only imagine what they would do to her. Sprinting, she went down to the basement and shut the door.

The men forced the door open, and she could hear the plans they had for her. Their conversation sent a shiver down her spine.

"Don't let those bastards touch you." Daryl's voice said.

Daryl's voice alone gave her confidence, comfort, and the will to survive. She would not let him down, and she was determined to find him again one day.

"I'll check the basement, you check the office." The perverted man said with an excited tone.

Beth hid behind an overturned table in the corner of the room. She waited for him to leave, but he was clearly determined to find her.

"Come here sweet thang, I know your pretty ass is here somewhere." He said as he made his way to the table she was behind.

"There you are."

He tried to pick her up, but she punched him in the groin.

"Ahhh! Eli I found h-"

His sentence was cut short by the blade of her knife slashing his throat. Right his body hits the ground, she can hear heavy footsteps coming down the stairs. Beth picks up Eli's pistol, and gets ready to shoot. The other man comes down the steps and is killed instantly by a bullet to the chest. Beth finishes the job with a knife to the skull for both of the men. She then takes both of their backpacks and leaves the church.

The gently spirit that Beth had once been died. The new Beth Greene was a survivor.

 **I might switch to Daryl's POV, but I may keep it in Beth's. I will update soon!**


	2. Chapter 2

Daryl laid in the dark once again, haunted by his dreams. The cynical part of him wished he had never met Beth. She came into his life, made him care and feel hope, then Dawn managed to shatter his hope and her skull at the same time. She changed him in ways that surprised him, but without her there, he was worried he would subconsciously shut the world out again.

"You gotta be who you are, not who you were."

He's not even startled by hearing her comforting voice anymore. Despite her age, she had a sage-like persona about her. It reminded him a lot of Hershel. He missed them both so much, but he would never admit it.

The sun started to rise, and he left the comforting walls of Alexandria to go hunting and attempt to clear his head. He found himself doing that a lot these days, but it never seemed to work.

Daryl silently glided along the forest floor trying to track a deer. Hunting used to bring him a startling amount of happiness. Now, it was more of something to pass the time. He knew he was being a little bitch. She had been gone for almost a month now. He didn't even mourn Merle this much, and that genuinely bothered him.

He reached the clearing where the deer was supposed to be, but instead found a red headed woman surrounded by five walkers. She killed two with ease, but the other three were right on top of her. Daryl fired his crossbow and killed the walker closest to her with a clean shot to the eye. The woman killed another walker with a hunting knife. Her form was pitiful and made Daryl cringe, but she got the job done nonetheless. He lunged at the walker on her left while she took care of the one on her right. Despite their obvious fighting differences, they fought together fairly well.

Daryl started to walk away, not in the mood to recruit anyone at the moment. But, being a typical woman, she started prying.

"What's your name?" she ran after him and practically shouted.

"Keep your voice down! I ain't gonna save your ass twice in five minutes." Daryl grumbled out.

"Sorry, my name is Jane. Please at least tell me yours," Jane pleaded.

"Daryl."

"Do you have a group?"

"Yes."

Daryl went through the usual process, asking the three questions and so on. She seemed alright, and after her mediocre fighting performance, he wasn't too worried about her getting the jump on him. When she mentioned who she killed though, a darkness appeared in her green eyes that reminded him of Beth.

"I killed my husband because he tried to kill my daughter. He thought he was doing her a favor by giving her a quick death. I disagreed." Jane said with a dullness in her voice.

"Can't blame you. That's some messed up shit."

Later that morning, they got back to Alexandria. Jane went through the whole process pretty seamlessly and got a living space near Daryl's.

He tried to sleep again that night, but was once again haunted by nightmares. He's seen the image of Beth's lifeless body so many times now. Even after a month of dreaming the same thing, he still feels the same pain. It hasn't subsided at all, if anything, it's just gotten worse.

There he was, back to his normal nightly routine of smoking a cigarette on the porch of some post-apocalyptic suburb home, sulking to himself and wondering when life got so complicated.

"Probably when the dead started to rise up and eat the living."

He sighed a long sigh. It was Beth again, and what she said did the opposite of comforting him. It just made him question for the thousandth time if she had become walker food, or even worse, if she somehow became a walker.

The thought of her becoming either of those things angered him to his core. He couldn't help taking his knife and stabbing the wood of the porch.

"Fuck this house." He said to himself.

He was about to get up and wander off somewhere when he saw Jane sauntering toward him. The way she swayed and slurred made it pretty obvious what she was doing. She was drunk and trying to seduce him. He certainly didn't need another female to complicate his life.

"Hey there, Daryl. You all alone?" she slurred out with a drunken smile on her face.

He knew a desperate woman when he saw one, and she clearly was very desperate if she was coming to him for a good time.

"Yes, and I'd like to keep it that way." He spat

"Ouch. I think I'll sit with you anyway." She said with too much enthusiasm.

He refused to have another heart to heart with a drunk woman on a porch. That memory was reserved for Beth, no one was going to replace that.

"Want something to drink?"

"I'll pass, and I'd appreciate it if you would get outta my damn space." He said a little more harshly then he meant to.

A sad smile appeared on her face, and she took another swig of the bottle.

"You sound just like my husband. He was a bastard, but I still loved him for some reason. Its nights like this when I miss him."

Daryl didn't know what to say so he just grunted and stared at the ground. For some reason, she reminded him so much of Beth. She was a little older, but something about her sadness struck him funny.

"You gotta lady? I saw you on the porch earlier, and if that ain't a confused man in love, then I don't know what it is."

"I ain't in love and she ain't my lady!" he snapped.

"She? What's her name?" she asked with youthful excitement.

"Don't matter. She's dead and I don't wanna talk about it."

Daryl got up and went back inside the house. This woman was a lot like Beth in some ways, but in others, she was completely different. Beth sure as hell didn't pry like this, and she also wasn't as desperate as this woman.

Jane sauntered in the house after him, clearly ignoring all common manners.

"Your lady ain't here huh? I'm sorry to hear that. I know what it's like to lose someone you care about."

She pointed at a tattoo on her arm that said Sarah.

"My daughter was 13 when this all started. She was too gentle, couldn't bring herself to kill anything. Because of that, she is dead. I still blame myself every day."

This time, Daryl genuinely felt bad for her. He didn't have any desire to have kids, but he would still lose his shit if one died. Even if Carl or Judith died he would lose his shit, and they aren't even his.

She was standing really close to him now, obviously expecting something. He could smell the alcohol in her breath, and see the desperation in her eyes. He had no interest in her beyond friendship, but he still felt the need to comfort her somehow. Awkwardly, he put a hand on her elbow. She responded completely opposite of what he wanted her too.

Jane lunged at him and buried her head in his chest, sobbing. After the shock wore off, he gently pushed her off.

"You should go. Get some sleep, you need it," he said as sincerely as he could.

She left without argument and he was thankful for that. He was still coping with Beth, he didn't need her emotional baggage to. He lowered himself on the couch in the living room and shut his eyes.

Beth was lying there, on the nasty church pew in Georgia. He walked up to her and tried to wake her, but she didn't move. He kept shaking her and shouting her name. She finally opened her eyes, but they were glazed over. She stood and starting moaning at him. He moved quickly, but he couldn't bring himself to kill her. She was about to bite him when he awoke to the feeling of sunshine in his eyes. Despite the fact that he clearly slept longer than normal, he still felt exhausted. He felt like he was going insane with grief.

"I will see you again one day."

Once again, he didn't feel much better. He felt confused.

The only way he would see her again is if he died, right?

He hoped he was wrong.


	3. Chapter 3

Beth left the church immediately after the attempted rape. The church was a painful reminder of the modern day horrors mixed with the dead promises of salvation. It also reminded her of her family. She didn't remember much about them, but she did often see certain objects that would trigger lost memories to play in her head. One evening, she saw a cross hanging from a rear view mirror in a car. It caused her to remember the memory of her father reading her a chapter in the book of Ruth. She remembered him saying that Ruth was a fearless woman of God, and that he wanted his daughter to have the strength that she did.

Beth wonders where her father is today. She remembered seeing him in a prison without a leg, and he had grown a white beard. But, that was the most recent memory she had of him. She had even fewer memories of her sister, Maggie. What bothered her even more was that she had to force herself to find the memories of her sister. If she didn't, her mind would automatically drift to Daryl.

She remembered so much about him. She remembered his scars, his surliness, but most of all, his loyalty. Every time a squirrel scurried past her, or the few times she passed an abandoned motorcycle, she found another memory of him. She was convinced she remembered everything about him, but then another memory would show up.

She continued on like this for weeks. Scavenging like an animal, walking like a donkey, and hearing the voice that would drive her forward.

After studying her old diary, and slowly regaining pieces of her memory, she concluded that her family was at a prison near Senoia, her hometown. She searched a gas station outside of Atlanta for a map. She discovered that she was about an hour from Senoia in a car.

Every car she encountered had something missing. Whether it was gas, keys, or a battery. No cars in the area would take her there. She didn't want to make the trip on foot, but if that's what it would take, she would do it. Right as she was about to give up, a car pulls up into the gas station.

 **Daryl's POV**

Three days after Jane's arrival, she tried to get a job involving scouting and recruitment. It was the same job that Daryl had. Daryl didn't think this woman tried to get the same job on purpose. Ever since she drunkenly approached him, she had barely talked to him since. So when he walked in on her flailing her knife around at a practice dummy, it was incredibly awkward.

"What are you doin'?" Daryl asked with amused curiosity.

"Practicing. They wouldn't let me join scouting and recruitment because I didn't fight good enough." Jane stated between breaths.

"I can see why," Daryl spat.

"Instead of being an asshole, why don't you just help me?"

Daryl had to admit, Jane had fire in her. She was determined, and he believed with some practice, she could make a useful fighter. So, he decided to give her a chance.

"I'll show you a couple things, but I ain't gonna be your teacher or nothin',"

He showed her the proper way to hold a knife, and how to stab someone without losing your balance or your defensive position, and the most efficient way to kill a walker with a knife.

"I really appreciate the help Daryl," Jane said with an honest smile on her face.

"S'nothing" Daryl grumbled out.

Daryl left the room without another word. He didn't feel as though he did a very good job teaching her. There were numerous times when he should've physically taken her arm and readjusted it, but he refused to touch her. After Beth, touching a woman, even if it was with complete innocent intent, just felt wrong. It not only made him feel sad, but it made him feel disappointed. Whether it was disappointed in himself, disappointed that the woman he was touching wasn't Beth, or if he was just flat out disappointed in the world, he would never know. But he did know this:

He felt cold and hollow without Beth.


End file.
